Law enforcement is key to China's food safety

Abstract

The current economic growth of China is astonishing (Liu andDiamond, 2008), but other aspects associated with the scale andrapidityofthisgrowtharenotsatisfactory.Inrecentyears,theissueof China’s food safety has been a primary focus of the media athome and abroad due to the continual recurrence of food safetyscandals. Most recently, the ‘‘killer baby milk powder’’ incidentonce again frustrated the public’s confidence in China’s food safety(China Daily, 2008). The Sanlu group, one of the China’s largestmanufacturers of dairy products, has been the major focus of thisconcern with revelations that its milk-based food products werecontaminated with melamine. According to the Ministry of Health,at least six babies have died as a result of this contamination(Zhu, 2008). In addition, the number of cases of kidney stones inbabies who were fed by baby food contaminated with melaminehad risen to 290,000 by December 2008 and occurred in areasscattered across China (Zhu, 2008).IthasbeenperceivedthatalackoflawsandregulationsinChinamay be the main reason leading to the nearly out-of-controlproblems of food safety in the country (China Daily, 2005; AsianDevelopment Bank, 2007). However the current situation under-scores that the solution should not lie in the blind establishment ofnew ‘‘basic food laws’’ but should be provided by law enforcement.According to the white paper on China’s food safety issued by theInformation Office of the State Council, China now has a completelaw regime providing a sound legal foundation and a good regu-latory environment for guaranteeing food safety, improving foodquality and controlling food imports and exports (State CouncilInformation Office of the People’s Republic of China, 2007). Thespecific laws in this regard include the Product Quality Law, Stan-dardization Law, Metrology Law, etc. and amount to eleven laws intotal with specific administrative regulations totaling thirteen(State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China,2007). Besides these, there are still ten specific departmental rulesrelating to food production (State Council Information Office of thePeople’sRepublicofChina,2007).Ifalltypesoffoodstandardswerecounted, there would be over 3000 laws, regulations, rules, andfood standards in China at present (Song, 2005). More recently, theFoodSafetyLawofthePeople’sRepublicofChina(Draft)(inDraftasof 20 April 2008, the law is designated as Draft hereafter) has beensubmitted to the National People’s Congress Standing Committeefor discussion after public comment (NPC, 2008). One of thebreakthroughs of the Draft is that it has established an account-abilitysystemtowhichlocalgovernmentleadersmustbesubjectedin the event of a food scandal occurring in their prefecture(LawinfoChina, 2008). This means that the central government hasshifted its emphasis away from pure economic performance andnow weighs economic performance and food safety performancewith the same level of importance. The Draft stipulates that localgovernments at and above county level shall: take overall respon-sibility for the inspection and management of food safety in theirjurisdiction; lead and coordinate the inspection and managementof food safety in their jurisdiction; establish and hone food safetycoordination mechanisms for the inspection and management offood safety; take the leading and commanding role in dealing withfood safety emergencies; develop a food safety accountabilitysystem; and review and evaluate the performance of food safetyregulatory agencies (LawinfoChina, 2008). Meanwhile, the Draftalso stipulates the development of mandatory national food safetystandards. Moreover, it is significant that a surveillance andassessment system for food safety risks will be set up according tothe new law (LawinfoChina, 2008). This means that a food safetyearly-warning system will be established to avoid human healthdamage before unintended ‘‘human testing’’ occurs amongconsumers.However, the situation of China’s food safety is very similar tothetrendinChina’senvironmentalrecord.Althoughtherearemorethan 100 environmental laws and various regulations in China,environmentaldegradationhasbeen continuing(LiuandDiamond,2008). In implementation of the food laws, China has focused ongovernmentsupervisionandadministrative punishment,butfailed